The problem with Birthdays
by pay-your-hecking-taxes
Summary: (Birthday fic for IndigoCode) Red and Crowe are left in charge of planning a birthday party for yellow. Despite his best efforts, Sketch and Tony get in on the act. Red does his best to keep the whole situation under control while juggling the responsibilities of a young child's birthday. (Puppetverse, no humanizations.) Chp 1/4


The problem with birthdays is that rarely, does one ever know what to do with them. The problem is not so hard when the person in question is a child, but it becomes harder when they're an adult. It became ten times harder if you didn't know what to do and was trying to keep it a secret. This was the problem that Red now found himself dealing with.

"Well, we could always just put up balloons and a make a cake. I'm sure he'll be happy with just that." Crowe suggested, trying to be helpful.

The two were sitting at the kitchen table with Red hunched over a pad of paper. They weren't sure if it was going to start singing or not, but seeing as how the only other object in the house to come to life was a clock, they were somewhat assured that duplicate items weren't liable to do the same. Yellow had gone out of the house, maybe for school. They weren't really sure what he did when anyone left the house, except for what they themselves did and they didn't usually share. With the constant threat of being musically assaulted with spontaneously singing sentient entities the feeling of privacy had become very strained in the house.

Red put down the pencil and held his head in his hands, stressed from all this.

"That's all fine and dandy but it feels impersonal. What do we even get started with the presents?" Red pointed out. Red was, for the most part, a person who didn't particularly get caught up in all the fine details or get caught up in the small things. He could be called lazy or even cold in this regard. Red would say that he was quite the opposite, he just didn't see the point in getting all fussy and worked up in petty issues. He did however put effort in the things that mattered, birthdays fell under this especially if a small child was involved. Red himself didn't care about his own birthday, it was simply a recognition that he was getting older and closer to death. The magic of such had worn off long ago and he simply didn't care. Perhaps it was because of his own outlook on the event that he struggled to find a simple solution to this.

"Hmm, well then, how about we ask the others in the house then?" Crowe once again suggested.

"They'll probably break it to him one way or another. Roy doesn't seem to care and I don't really want to talk to him. _Those _two," Red pointed out, stressing 'those' with a tinge of annoyance, "would spoil it one way or another. They aren't exactly very good at hiding things."

Red leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Maybe it'd give him some answers or maybe he'd go blind from staring at the lights.

"Does someone have a problem being creative?"

Red shut his eyes.

Perfect. Just what they needed. Two psychopathic house objects getting involved.

Red hunched over the paper he'd been writing ideas on but 'sketchbook' as the label on their back cover insisted, had beat him to it. Red wondered how they did it with no legs but it was in the same vein as 'how did all these things come to life and start singing all of a sudden'. Both of which were better left unanswered and just begrudgingly accepted.

"We don't need help, we just-" Red found himself cut off by the pad paper. It was a bit weird seeing a pad of paper reading another pad of paper.

"Nonsense friend! You're obviously struggling with a matter of creativity. Who else to help with this problem than myself?" Red must have been glaring, because the Sketchpad was trying to assure him everything would be fine.

"I know you might be skeptical, but I assure you , I only want to help. Honestly. I won't let things get out of control like last time." Those soulless black dotted eyes stared back at him, that sadistic thin line bent slightly into a smile.

"If I say no are you going to get involved anyway?"  
Red already knew the answer to this.

"You know it!"

Red sighed.

"Fine, you can 'help' but on one condition." Red wasn't sure what good this would do but threw it in anyway on the off chance that sketch actually obeyed. Then again their whole shtick had been about creativity and not following the rules wasn't it?  
Red frowned to himself, thankfully with his mop of fur this was impossible to see.

Sketch stopped mid celebration and stared. There was something behind that stare, that frozen smile.

Something deadly, something that held a silent threat, the threat not to limit them too much. They knew, he could see it in their eyes.

"What is it friend?" They asked, the threat hidden just as thinly veiled with coldness under the pretense of a warm question.

The insanity that threatened to boil over.

"Before you do anything, I want you to run your ideas by either me or Crowe." He stated in a monotone voice, stealing a glance at his bird friend. The bird in question froze, gripping his cup. Red almost swore that you could see the steam from his cup freeze in place as well.

"Wouldn't that be counterproductive?" Another ask, they were pushing now, for more control. It was a mind game between the two of them and Red could not afford to lose. Not for Yellow's birthday party but for their own sake,to show they would not be pushed around.

"This is _really _important, and I don't want you to 'lose control'." He stated, putting emphasize on the last two words, reminding them of the little 'incident' that happened soon after their _first _attempt to educate them on creativity.

Sketch didn't respond, just sitting there, staring at him. Red couldn't tell what was going on through their head but he braced himself nonetheless. Crowe was apprehensive as well. The bird was already a 'not creative color' as was stated several times before. The avian didn't want to find himself taking the brunt of the paper's fury.

"You can count on me!" Sketch responded suddenly and cheerfully, a stark contrast to the past few minutes. This took both puppets off guard. This only made Red more cautious and a little more unnerved about the situation.

"Alright, since that's out of the way, all that's left is the cake, and the presents-" Red listed off the things that were still left to be done.

"Do you think we'll have enough time for it all?" Crowe asked innocently. Red shot him a look, they'd been very careful not to mention certain words around the house and 'time' was one of them.

"Did someone say time?" Came a baritone voice.

Red held his wooly, moppy head in his hands. This was just going to get worse, wasn't it?  
With sketchbook, they simply had to worry about whether or not things were going to be unsettling or if they were going to find themselves out of their mind in a creative frenzy. Tony, on the other hand, was a different story all together.

He'd been just as adamant on the validity of his view of 'time' as Sketch had been about 'creativity' but he took it one step further. They feared him like they feared death, because such a thing was well within his power and one demonstration of that was more than enough to ingrain it into their heads. What he had done made their encounter with sketch a pleasant walk in the park.

"NO, no one mentioned the word time. There's no time to be had here." Red argued forcefully. This day was getting worse by the minute. It was only half an hour since they started talking about it and already he'd gotten two of these demonic objects involved. Keeping them in check was going to eat away at the limited time they had.

"There's _always _time to be had." Tony stated. "I know today is someone's special day."

Red just stared at the clock. Was he trying to sound 'friendly'? If anything, it just sounded...strange. Creepy maybe.

"It's yellow's birthday today and I'm helping." Sketch announced, ruining whatever chance Red had of turning Tony away from all this.

"Ah yes, Birthdays! Another node on the road to death." Tony replied without giving a thought to just how morbid that sounded. It was true but still morbid.

Red watched the two in disgust.

"Look, you two. Today is very important and I will _not _have either of you ruin this for us." Red started sharply,putting his metaphorical foot down on those two.

"You don't have to worry about me, friend, I've already agreed not to do anything extreme."

"And we appreciate that-" Red was cut off again, this time by Tony.

"You sound like you need help."

"You're not going to seriously get involved are you? Don't you have better things to do?" Red asked exasperatedly, a last ditch effort to get Tony to go away. Ideas ran through his head, images of the carnage that would be left in Tony's wake. How would he control Tony? Could he even be trusted of somehow made to _not _go about doing what he pleased?

"The most important thing about birthdays is that it's spent together. Tony's family!" Sketchbook exclaimed, petitioning for their fellow object to be allowed in.

Red couldn't dismiss this claim, not without raising hell from either of them.

And that's how Red and Crowe were roped into preparing a birthday party with a pair of nutty, talking, sentient objects.

AN: Very late birthday fic for IndigoCode/employee210 mun.

I will try to crank out the second and possibly third parts before school is over.

I can see it having maybe 4 parts in total don't quote me on that.


End file.
